Skins actor Kathryn Prescott's new exhibition shows stars posing as homeless people

Unconscious: Francois Arnaud (The Borgias) photographed in Korea Town, Los Angeles

A young girl crouches behind the barrier on a darkened motorway, her somehow familiar face pale with distress. Something dreadful must have happened to make this the safest place to hide. In another image, a young man is sprawled unconscious, as shoppers walk hurriedly by. Something about him is familiar too. Who is he? What has brought him this low?

“I wanted to make people take a second look,” says photographer Kathryn Prescott, “to compel that sense of recognition, where you can’t quite put your figure on how you know them.”

In the past two years Prescott, 22, has forged a second career as a photographer but she is best known as the Skins actress who played much-loved lesbian character Emily Fitch in the E4 teen drama.

Next month an exhibition of her prints, What Makes Us Care?, opens to raise awareness about youth homelessness, featuring well-known faces from film and TV, including her Skins co-stars Kaya Scodelario, Lucy Loveless and Megan Prescott (Kathryn’s sister).

Prescott has made her subjects look destitute and broken. Being Human actor Craig Roberts is photographed looking abject in the rain; The Borgias’ François Arnaud lies sprawled across a street in Los Angeles.